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What's a Wreck?

A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

For some reason canine cakes seem to be all the rage these days, particularly in grocery-store bakeries. Now, I don't want to get down on these decorators too much, considering that a) they are usually over-worked and under-trained, and b) they outnumber me significantly. That said, you'd think that whoever was in charge of this kind of thing would have known that these doggy designs were a little, shall we say, beyond this group's collective skill set?

For example, here's the picture you order from:

And here's what you get:

Niiice. See, you can tell it's the exact same cake you ordered, 'cuz it has that red loopy bow sticking out of its head. I particularly like the oozing eye. Plus, that red "collar" looks a lot more like a gushing cranial wound - ditto for the "tongue".

I guess this one's a little better:

But it still looks more like a dirty mop-head with a face drawn on than a dog. Where are the legs? The ears? The neck? Also, if you're going to have a cake like this, why oh why would you stick candles in the poor pooch's back? He looks like he's been the target of sky-diving archers.

Also in vogue are the tiny cupcake pups, ala Miss Love-You-1.000-Time. These are already wrecktastic in concept, given that there are only 2 cupcakes underneath the deluge of frosting, but the execution just makes 'em that much better. Check back tomorrow for those; this post is officially "to be continued"!

Reader Comments (83)

I loooove the site..but today I am a little disappointed! I am a little skeptical that the first wreck really was ordered from that first poochy..the tag? on the cake says something bear! Plus the claws look a little bearish. what do you think?

Yes, the tag does say "Moma Bear", but that doesn't look like any bear I ever saw, any more than it looks like a dog. And I agree, eating a good or bad rendition of a dog doesn't seem appetizing to me. Wreck in concept and execution.I don't get anonymous @ 5:30, "disappointment" seems unwarranted. Those cakes are wrecks regardless of what the "model" was.

I'm kind of against the idea of cake being too realistic looking in the first place, which is why a semi-realistic dog does not appeal to me.

But what gets me laughing is that the first "replica" was actually given to someone. Like, the person who ordered saw the original and they were expecting... not a pile of frosting oozing out of every conceivable shape... yikes. And what would the conversation have been like?

"Yeah, I know you ordered this out of the picture book, but this is what it's really supposed to look like."

I am aware that I am a horrible, horrible person, but my first thought when I saw that first dog wreck was "Did someone throw up on the plate?" And now I have images from "A Child Called It" in my head. Thanks a lot.

I can't imagine why a grocery store would use a picture of a cake that even a well-trained, experienced baker would have trouble duplicating. On the other hand, I don't know why anyone would order this cake from a grocery store (or ANY cake from a grocery store) and expect it to look like the picture.